The Wings of the Morning Part 14

"What do you want it for?" she inquired, when the st.u.r.dy trunk creaked and fell.

Jenks felt better now.

"This is a change of diet," he explained. "No; we don't boil the leaves or nibble the bark. When I split this palm open you will find that the interior is full of pith. I will cut it out for you, and then it will be your task to knead it with water after well washing it, pick out all the fiber, and finally permit the water to evaporate. In a couple of days the residuum will become a white powder, which, when boiled, is sago."

"Good gracious!" said Iris.

"The story sounds unconvincing, but I believe I am correct. It is worth a trial."

"I should have imagined that sago grew on a stalk like rice or wheat."

"Or Topsy!"

She laughed. A difficult situation had pa.s.sed without undue effort.

Unhappily the man reopened it. Whilst using a crowbar as a wedge he endeavored to put matters on a straightforward footing.

"A little while ago," he said, "you seemed to imply that I had a.s.sumed the name of Jenks."

But Miss Deane's confidential mood had gone. "Nothing of the kind," she said, coldly. "I think Jenks is an excellent name."

She regretted the words even as they fell from her lips. The sailor gave a mighty wrench with the bar, splitting the log to its cl.u.s.tering leaves.

"You are right," he said. "It is distinctive, brief, dogmatic. I cling to it pa.s.sionately."

Soon afterwards, leaving Iris to the manufacture of sago, he went to the leeward side of the island, a search for turtles being his ostensible object. When the trees hid him he quickened his pace and turned to the left, in order to explore the cavity marked on the tin with a skull and cross-bones. To his surprise he hit upon the remnants of a roadway--that is, a line through the wood where there were no well-grown trees, where the ground bore traces of humanity in the shape of a wrinkled and mildewed pair of Chinese boots, a wooden sandal, even the decayed remains of a palki, or litter.

At last he reached the edge of the pit, and the sight that met his eyes held him spellbound.

The labor of many hands had torn a chasm, a quarry, out of the side of the hill. Roughly circular in shape, it had a diameter of perhaps a hundred feet, and at its deepest part, towards the cliff, it ran to a depth of forty feet. On the lower side, where the sailor stood, it descended rapidly for some fifteen feet.

Gra.s.ses, shrubs, plants of every variety, grew in profusion down the steep slopes, wherever seeds could find precarious nurture, until a point was reached about ten or eleven feet from the bottom. There all vegetation ceased as if forbidden to cross a magic circle.

Below this belt the place was a charnel-house. The bones of men and animals mingled in weird confusion. Most were mere skeletons. A few bodies--nine the sailor counted--yet preserved some resemblance of humanity. These latter were scattered among the older relics. They wore the clothes of Dyaks. Characteristic hats and weapons denoted their nationality. The others, the first harvest of this modern Golgotha, might have been Chinese coolies. When the sailor's fascinated vision could register details he distinguished yokes, baskets, odd-looking spades and picks strewed amidst the bones. The animals were all of one type, small, lanky, with long pointed skulls. At last he spied a withered hoof. They were pigs.

Over all lay a thick coating of fine sand, deposited from the eddying winds that could never reach the silent depths. The place was gruesome, horribly depressing. Jenks broke out into a clammy perspiration. He seemed to be looking at the secrets of the grave.

At last his superior intelligence a.s.serted itself. His brain became clearer, recovered its power of a.n.a.lysis. He began to criticize, reflect, and this is the theory he evolved--

Some one, long ago, had discovered valuable minerals in the volcanic rock. Mining operations were in full blast when the extinct volcano took its revenge upon the human ants gnawing at its vitals and smothered them by a deadly outpouring of carbonic acid gas, the bottled-up poison of the ages. A horde of pigs, running wild over the island--placed there, no doubt, by Chinese fishers--had met the same fate whilst intent on dreadful orgy.

Then there came a European, who knew how the anhydrate gas, being heavier than the surrounding air, settled like water in that terrible hollow. He, too, had striven to wrest the treasure from the stone by driving a tunnel into the cliff. He had partly succeeded and had gone away, perhaps to obtain help, after crudely registering his knowledge on the lid of a tin canister. This, again, probably fell into the hands of another man, who, curious but unconvinced, caused himself to be set ash.o.r.e on this desolate spot, with a few inadequate stores. Possibly he had arranged to be taken off within a fixed time.

But a sampan, laden with Dyak pirates, came first, and the intrepid explorer's bones rested near the well, whilst his head had gone to decorate the hut of some fierce village chief. The murderers, after burying their own dead--for the white man fought hard, witness the empty cartridges--searched the island. Some of them, ignorantly inquisitive, descended into the hollow. They remained there. The others, superst.i.tious barbarians, fled for their lives, embarking so hastily that they took from the cave neither tools nor oil, though they would greatly prize these articles.

Such was the tragic web he spun, a compound of fact and fancy. It explained all perplexities save one. What did "32 divided by 1" mean?

Was there yet another fearsome riddle awaiting solution?

And then his thoughts flew to Iris. Happen what might, her bright picture was seldom absent from his brain. Suppose, egg-hunting, she had stumbled across this Valley of Death! How could he hope to keep it hidden from her? Was not the ghastly knowledge better than the horror of a chance ramble through the wood and the shock of discovery, nay, indeed, the risk of a catastrophe?

He was a man who relieved his surcharged feelings with strong language--a habit of recent acquisition. He indulged in it now and felt better. He rushed back through the trees until he caught sight of Iris industriously kneading the sago pith in one of those most useful dish-covers.

He called to her, led her wondering to the track, and pointed out the fatal quarry, but in such wise that she could not look inside it.

"You remember that round hole we saw from the summit rock?" he said.

"Well, it is full of carbonic acid gas, to breathe which means unconsciousness and death. It gives no warning to the inexperienced. It is rather pleasant than otherwise. Promise me you will never come near this place again."

Now, Iris, too, had been thinking deeply. Robert Jenks bulked large in her day-dreams. Her nerves were not yet quite normal. There was a catch in her throat as she answered--

"I don't want to die. Of course I will keep away. What a horrid island this is! Yet it might be a paradise."

She bit her lip to suppress her tears, but, being the Eve in this garden, she continued--

"How did you find out? Is there anything--nasty--in there?"

"Yes, the remains of animals, and other things. I would not have told you were it not imperative."

"Are you keeping other secrets from me?"

"Oh, quite a number."

He managed to conjure up a smile, and the ruse was effective. She applied the words to his past history.

"I hope they will not be revealed so dramatically," she said.

"You never can tell," he answered. They were in prophetic vein that morning. They returned in silence to the cave.

"I wish to go inside, with a lamp. May I?" he asked.

"Certainly. Why not?"

He had an odd trick of blushing, this bronzed man with a gnarled soul.

He could not frame a satisfactory reply, but busied himself in refilling the lamp.

"May I come too?" she demanded.

He flung aside the temptation to answer her in kind, merely a.s.senting, with an explanation of his design. When the lamp was in order he held it close to the wall and conducted a systematic survey. The geological fault which favored the construction of the tunnel seemed to diverge to the left at the further end. The "face" of the rock exhibited the marks of persistent labor. The stone had been hewn away by main force when the dislocation of strata ceased to be helpful.

His knowledge was limited on the subject, yet Jenks believed that the material here was a hard limestone rather than the external basalt.

Searching each inch with the feeble light, he paused once, with an exclamation.

"What is it?" cried Iris.

"I cannot be certain," he said, doubtfully. "Would you mind holding the lamp whilst I use a crowbar?"

In the stone was visible a thin vein, bluish white in color. He managed to break off a fair-sized lump containing a well-defined specimen of the foreign metal.

They hurried into the open air and examined the fragment with curious eyes. The sailor picked it with his knife, and the substance in the vein came off in laminated layers, small, brittle scales.